April 28th, 2014

If there’s no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon, Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state,” Secretary of State John Kerry told a room of influential world leaders in a closed-door meeting Friday…

Kerry also said that at some point, he might unveil his own peace deal and tell both sides to “take it or leave it.”

“A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens—or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state,” Kerry told the group of senior officials and experts from the U.S., Western Europe, Russia, and Japan. “Once you put that frame in your mind, that reality, which is the bottom line, you understand how imperative it is to get to the two-state solution, which both leaders, even yesterday, said they remain deeply committed to.”

That’s what happens when you add a man like Kerry to an administration like Obama’s.

I’ve written about Kerry many times before. I’ve had contempt for him for a long, long time, decades before I had my political change experience. His 1970 and 1971 meetings with the North Vietnamese and his Congressional testimony in 1971 concerning the Vietnam War (comparing our troops to Genghis Khan’s forces, downplaying the tyranny of Communism) were deeply offensive as well as indicative of his overwhelming personal ambition and arrogance. Finally becoming Secretary of State under Obama after all those years of aspiration to something greater than the Senate was probably a consolation prize that helped console him for the bitterness of his presidential defeat in 2004.

So what are Kerry’s latest remarks about? Some of it is merely a reflection of the relatively anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian attitude of the Obama administration. But some of it is probably Kerry’s own anger at how impotent he’s been in achieving anything in the Middle East negotiations so far. Narcissists tend to get especially frustrated when their expectations of their own power aren’t realized, and Kerry’s lack of success in the Middle East “peace process” would almost inevitably cause him to strike out in retaliation of the verbal sort. His remarks are a version of why can’t these stupid people see things clearly, like I do? Why don’t they just bow to my superior wisdom and “take” the peace plan I’ve worked so hard on?

[NOTE: There’s a reason why the Arab states in the Middle East aren’t actual “apartheid” states (rather than imagined ones, like Israel), and that’s because they became Judenfrei some time ago.]

42 Responses to “John Kerry, our illustrious Secretary of State…”

imo too much effort was made by the swiftboat vets in attempting to cast doubt on Kerry’s service record, and not nearly enough on his scurrilous and self-serving remarks regarding his former fellow soldiers during the hearings.

Kerry sure is taking his cues from Obama, and certainly matches his boss’ arrogance and narcissism. Heck, the timing of these remarks – Holocaust Remembrance Day – is straight out of the Obama in-your-face playbook.

It’s amazing that Kerry continues to ignore that the Palestinians/Hamas have stated unequivocally (and often) they will not recognize an Israeli state. They no more tolerate a two-state solution than Israel.

I defer to no one in my contempt for John Forbes Kerry, but I suggest one might give more thorough consideration to his whole two-sentence remark that includes the reflex-trigger word “Apartheid”.

“A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens—or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state.”

Yes, he insults Israel by saying it will treat Muzzies as 2nd class, but no one, repeat no one, except the Palis with their stupid right to return claim contemplates a unitary state. He does, reasonably IMHO, also say a unitary state will destroy Israel as Jewish.

We here ought to gird ourselves against reflex reactions to words, whether code words or not. South African apartheid was nowhere near as bad as the slaughter of Ibos in Nigeria, or the >800,000 machete-killed in Ruanda. Functionally, apartheid is practiced right here in the USA, in tony places like Marin County CA and Boston.

So Kerry wants a two state solution? The devil’s in the details, but I see no basis for oppo to the thought just because he used the A-word.

If there was a two state solution and the Pals then continued to send rockets into Israel, Bibi wouldn’t need any excuse to blow the Pals away. Perhaps that’s why there will never be a two state solution…. the Pals know it would be there end of their existence.

As I understand it, the Israelis are in favor of a 2-state solution, but the Palis will not have it, They want a one-state (theirs, no Jews allowed) solution. If the Israelis could find another place to live, it would be a delicious irony for them to move away and let the Palis destroy themselves, with the non-assistance of all the other Arabs who don’t like them, and haven’t accepted them since 1947.

The especially offensive bit here was the reference to apartheid, not the 2-state part.

And this isn’t a guy talking on the phone to his mistress, or a rancher giving his first press conference. This is the US Secretary of State speaking in his official capacity to an audience of international world leaders, and he is purposely using one of the most inflammatory words possible in a mendacious manner, one designed to inflame outrage and to feed the myths that foster the destruction of Israel.

Obama and Kerry are qualified to speak of apartheid; after all the left’s goal is to make white, middle class Americans second class citizens with ever vanishing rights to the point of complete subjugation.

Perhaps someone could enlighten me–I thought Palestinians could become Israeli citizens as it is. Aren’t there Palestinians in the Knesset? If so, Kerry’s notion that the Israelis can’t run a modern multi-ethnic state without resorting to apartheid is indeed insulting.

N-Neocon…Me too, Kiddo!! Even in the 70s when I rmained solidly Liberal-Dem and actively anti-Vietnam War, I loathed Kerry. We in the latter spat at mere mention of him and Jane the Doofus Fonda as very late comers and “Look at Meeeeee…!!” idiots.

As I was coming over from the Dark Side around ’80-’82 and Mr. Kerry was off to Sandinistaland to drool and smarm around the communist regime as a U.S.Senator, I upped my detestation of him to the steroidal level.

As for Israel becoming an apartheid State, it’s unavoidable given the utter immorality of the great majority of the world. Israel’s technological prowess and its new oil and natural gas fields will allow it to tell the world to go pound sand. The greatest physical challenge Israel faces is its vulnerability to a nuclear attack. A form of MAD is its best insurance against that with its ‘Samson option’; the day Tel Aviv is hit is the day that Islam’s holiest sites cease to exist; the City of Qom (south Tehran), Medina and Mecca, as well as London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels.

Consequences. Let Islam and the International Left know that, if Israel must pay an unimaginable price, so will they.

There’s the reek of desperation in Kerry’s increasingly shrill diatribes. I’m getting the feeling that he’s invested his own sense of worth in the outcome.
Which is alternately vain and sad: at this point, what are the odds that anyone could solve this dispute?

“The crazy thing is that ALL of the active parties have pulled back from the table precisely BECAUSE JFK is in the saddle.”

I think not. Netanyahu won’t willingly play in a rigged game but had to pretend to (performed brilliantly with a very bad hand) and the Palestinians are too stupid to recognize the deal Obama handed them.

“And what are we no make of the fusion of the Gaza crew with the ‘West Bank’ crew?”

Water seeks its own level.

“Doesn’t that event make it (legally/ officially) impossible for the US State Department to speak with these players?”

Well, it would…if this administration was law abiding. But they’re the biggest bunch of crooks ever to invest the Executive Branch, so it won’t stop them from pretending it doesn’t matter.

Ted Cruz has now asked for Kerry’s resignation: “It is my belief that Secretary Kerry has proven himself unsuitable for the position he holds. And therefore, before any further harm is done to our national security interests and to our critical alliance with the nation of Israel, John Kerry should offer President Obama his resignation and the president should accept it.”

Neo @4:25 pm:
Then that’s where the emphasis needs to be put, that JFK the Diplomat is using a word that has become a reflex trigger, instantly reducing the Sharptons of the West to ebonic ranting and foaming.
I spent some time in SA during apartheid. Contemporary life in Venezuela is worse than Bantu life under apartheid, never mind Cuba, never mind Eastern Europe under the USSR. Apartheid is a dirty word primarily because the Left made it so. Apartheid was a “disproportionate” solution. The innate dignity of the oppressed and “Cry, The Beloved Country”, etc, etc. for people who had never been there and were told what to believe about eevil white guys, the Afrikaans and English. Told what to believe. To this day.

Apartheid was an evil policy, however serious (and perhaps intractable) the problems it was designed to deal with (or bottle up) were. The remedies, and South Africa’s state today, are pretty bad as well, but that doesn’t mean that apartheid was just a “disproportionate” solution. It was no solution at all, and it was wrong.

And by the way, have you ever actually read Cry, the Beloved Country, and if so how recently? I wonder if you have, because one thing the book does not do is demonize white people as evil or idealize black people as good. It sees the situation as tragic all around. The book, by the way, is masterful and moving.

Cry was writtenbefore apartheid was instituted, which means it doesn’t describe the situation of official apartheid, although it certainly describes the situation leading up to it.

You also might want to review this post I wrote a number of years ago about Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and Ian Smith.

Heck, I was there, working at a mission hospital in the bush (as it is called), so who am I going to believe, the agitators who came later, the ANC communists, or my own lying eyes? Of course I read Paton. My take is different than yours.
And South Africa is going into the toilet despite all its promise. Very sad and wasteful.

And is your “take” that he says whites are evil? If so, you are reading-comprehension challenged.

Did you read my post on Rhodesia?

Paton’s point was exactly that South Africa was going into the toilet despite all its promise. And although back in the 40s he held out some hope in the book that it would be different in the future, the hope is very slender and tenuous compared to the sorrows he described.

He certainly didn’t idealize or excuse the black community, either, including its widespread criminality and the breakdown of the family. I really do wonder what book you read.

On the list of loathsome activities of Kerry’s VVAW, you should mention his leadership while the group planned the assassination of 5 US Senators in the Capitol. After a 3 day meeting in KC the group chose not to go forward because they feared the PR following the murder of the pro war Senators might harm their cause more than the killings would help. The hard core vowed to go forward with the plot. Kerry, a sworn officer in the Naval Reserve, never notified the authorities of the continuing plot.

Note, some FBI sources say that Kerry and the VVAW prepared audio tapes that were sent to the NVA for use in the torture of POWs.

Obama and Kerry are like husbands or parents who abuse their spouses and kids. They like to slap around anyone who can’t harm them, but they’re cowards and pussies when It comes to standing up to adults.
It’s interesting how our foreign policy can be so indecisive and impotent when it requires the administration stand up to those who oppose our interests and those of our friends, but when it comes to lecturing allies, there’s no pulling punches.
With any luck, Thurston Kerry the 3rd and Lovey will take a cruise on their common man’s yacht at his summer, and get lost at sea.

The problem with Jews in Israel is that they like peace and safety for their kids, but for some reason (political payments) keep releasing Palestinian mass murderers and allowing the Palis to exist on this planet.

Other than that, the Jews would be pretty internally consistent.

If they want peace, they’ll have to terminate the Palis or make them somebody else’s problem. If they don’t want peace but 50-500 years of warfare, they can just keep doing what they are doing, their “two state” solution.

Thanks for your kind words, Neo. In interest of brevity I sometimes lump things too closely together. Yes, I read Cry a long time ago. I don’t write academic papers for grades here (!) and my takeaway differs from yours. So it goes. I was there, as I said.
Bottom line for me is apartheid has become a reflex-flinch word, like racist, homophobe, Nazi, Koch bros. Not in that at all are Communist, Che, Chavez, collective, Red.
That Kerry used the word to a group of “world leaders” means what? That they are suckers, or are shocked, shocked? That he said it for the media to send out to the peasantry? For those of us who, like me, have first hand knowledge that apartheid is not a greater evil than those evils presently and recently before us, it is not a big deal. JFK merely said what is obvious: there is NO single state solution.

What we are overlooking in the “apartheid state” chatter is not an insult to Israel but the veiled threat Israel will be treated by the “International Community” with boycotts exactly as South Africa was pre-“reconciliation”. That move is well under way, per the Presbyterian Church USA and Western academia, inter alia. Then, a bunch of Leftists pushed for SA boycotts, and got them: screw their Bantu brothers in the process.

roc sscrs: Israeli citizens of Arab descent ARE Israelis. They can and do serve in the Army, hold political office, and serve on the Supreme Court.

In Israel, a Jew can sell his land to an Arab, an Arab can sell his land to a Jew. An Arab can live anywhere he wants, a Jew can live anywhere he wants. In the Palestinian Administration territory, no Jew may live. An Arab who sells land to a Jew has committed a capital crime and will be executed (usually before trial). So you see, that’s why Israel is an apartheid state. Get it?

Those Israelis are just like those right-wing fascist Americans who think people should be citizens before they have the right to vote! The US is an apartheid state!

Ymarsakar: If they want peace, they’ll have to terminate the Palis or make them somebody else’s problem.

Because genocide and ethnic cleansing will surely solve the problem.

blert: By their own words, the ‘Palestinians’ don’t consider themselves to be anything other than Arab, which their DNA indicates.

The y-chromosome shows that Palestinians are a distinct group with close affinity to Jews. See Hammer et al., Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes,http://www.pnas.org/content/97/12/6769/F2.large.jpg

roc scssrs: Perhaps someone could enlighten me–I thought Palestinians could become Israeli citizens as it is.

Only within Israel proper. The problem is the millions of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. If they are allowed to vote in Israeli elections, Israel will cease to be a majority Jewish nation, something Israel will never allow to happen. If they are not allowed to vote, then you have a society with two-tiered citizenship.

The only viable solution is two independent states. The Palestinians officially don’t object to Israel, but object to Israel as a designated Jewish state. Ultimately, they will continue to be neighbors, so they will have to find a way to peace. It will happen, but the road has been long and tortuous.

Zachriel: Of course Jews and the Arab population of the area will share chromosomes as from a biblical standpoint they are both descended from Abraham – one through Isaac and Jacob and the other through Ishmael and Esau. So I’m not really sure what your point is.

LondonTrader: Of course Jews and the Arab population of the area will share chromosomes as from a biblical standpoint they are both descended from Abraham – one through Isaac and Jacob and the other through Ishmael and Esau.

Blert had said that “‘Palestinians’ don’t consider themselves to be anything other than Arab, which their DNA indicates.” This was wrong on both counts.

Palestinians are culturally Arabic, but more closely related to Jews, not to most Arabic groupings. It also shows they have deep roots in Palestine (as do Jews). Palestinian nationalism follows from this history.

This result is only through the male line. Full chromosome analysis of Jewish populations shows they have affinity to the areas of the world from which they lived over the past two millennia.

He really blew it. Doubling down on a loss could work for astute investors, but if one is a shallow, vacuous, popinjay, this is not the best way to get a promotion. Kerry is a filed secretary of State, going over his biography is a disappointing and unrewarding process. His page in history, will be a footnote, a litany of failures, zero accomplishments.

Z boy’s Palis certainly think it will solve the Jewish question. And since Z supports Palis, where does it go off telling me about this subject? That it has self imposed expertise and authority on it because they are the best at it?

Everyone should, but they’re like Zimmer boy here, they don’t condemn it. After all, Z thinks his Pali friends are lovable bunnies that would never harm anyone. Let alone Jewish children targeted for elimination for Jewish soldiers targeted for kidnapping and death ransoms.

Bunch of hypocrites trying to impose a world consensus via top down hierarchical demands. As if you can get people to obey that easily. Weaklings like your Pali terrorists, perhaps, the “majority” of the two state solution there.

Btw, the fact that you are now locked on (quick replies), means your tool AI programming and Turing Emulation systems have detected a flaw or weakness here that can be exploited in your war against humanity, Fallen Angel.

But that is more of a programming flaw than your toolish avatar realizes.

Of course he’s invested. How else is he going to get that Nobel Peace Prize he lusts after? Both are necessary steps in getting the UN Secretary job he has his eye on…

Until The Den of Thieves on Turtle Bay changes its Charter and the rules on the election of a Secretary General, Kerry and Owebama cannot be Secretary General of the UN. For now, no permanent member of the Security Council is allowed to have one of its citizens become Secretary General. Of course, with President Nobel Peace Prize For Doing Nothing, anything is possible.

Back to the topic:

When it comes to the Paleostinians, I am always reminded of Golda Meir’s comment (and I paraphrase): Until the Paleos love their children as much as the Israelis love theirs, there will be no peace. In my book, loving your children does not mean loving them for becoming homicide bombers.

Personally, I’m always amazed at Israeli restraint. Were I in charge, the Gaza Strip would have been an Israeli beach resort decades ago, with any Jordyptians kicked back to the countries from which they originally hail. Either that, or the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would be the largest parking lots on the planet. One simply cannot negotiate with such barbarians: There is no common language for peace.

About Me

Previously a lifelong Democrat, born in New York and living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself slowly but surely leaving the fold and becoming that dread thing: a neocon. Read More >>